Greased Lightbox is a free Firefox/GreaseMonkey script that delivers "Lightbox" type image viewing style (seen on sites like this one) to many sites that link to images such as Flickr and Google images.

Every once in a while I get emails asking me about the "Lightbox" style image viewing I have on this site from people who want to implement something similar on theirs (for the record I use a Wordpress plugin called Shutter Reloaded for this). Generally speaking it is a fairly nice effect, and so the question becomes: wouldn’t it be terrific if there were a Firefox plugin that delivers this function to any image site(s) that you may be browsing? Greased Lightbox is that plugin. Some notes on this as follows:

• How to use: install then browse over to an image site such as Flickr or perform a Google image search. Click on an image then browse the images with the arrow keys. Press "+" to zoom in, "-" to zoom out, "0" for full size, and "x","Esc", or mouse-click on the image to exit.
• Requires the Greasemonkey extension (see "compatibility below").

The verdict: a very nice effect indeed. Not as fancy and ambitious as, say, something like CoolIris (formerly PicLens) and it’s 3D wall of images, but depending on what you like this may be a good thing.

Version Tested: 0.18

Compatibility: works with Firefox with Greasemonkey extension or Safari with GreaseKit or Opera 8+

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 72K).